Speaking of human evolution, PNAS has a new paper that proposes the best solution to matching genetic and morphological data with the past is two major pulses of OOA migration for modern humans:

Genomic and cranial phenotype data support multiple modern human dispersals from Africa and a southern route into Asia

Significance

Current consensus indicates that modern humans originated from an ancestral African population between 𢏁00-200 ka. The ensuing dispersal pattern is controversial, yet has important implications for the demographic history and genetic/phenotypic structure of extant human populations. We test for the first time to our knowledge the spatiotemporal dimensions of competing out-of-Africa dispersal models, analyzing in parallel genomic and craniometric data. Our results support an initial dispersal into Asia by a southern route beginning as early as 𢏁30 ka and a later dispersal into northern Eurasia by 𢏅0 ka. Our findings indicate that African Pleistocene population structure may account for observed plesiomorphic genetic/phenotypic patterns in extant Australians and Melanesians. They point to an earlier out-of-Africa dispersal than previously hypothesized.

Abstract
Despite broad consensus on Africa as the main place of origin for anatomically modern humans, their dispersal pattern out of the continent continues to be intensely debated. In extant human populations, the observation of decreasing genetic and phenotypic diversity at increasing distances from sub-Saharan Africa has been interpreted as evidence for a single dispersal, accompanied by a series of founder effects. In such a scenario, modern human genetic and phenotypic variation was primarily generated through successive population bottlenecks and drift during a rapid worldwide expansion out of Africa in the Late Pleistocene. However, recent genetic studies, as well as accumulating archaeological and paleoanthropological evidence, challenge this parsimonious model. They suggest instead a “southern route” dispersal into Asia as early as the late Middle Pleistocene, followed by a separate dispersal into northern Eurasia. Here we test these competing out-of-Africa scenarios by modeling hypothetical geographical migration routes and assessing their correlation with neutral population differentiation, as measured by genetic polymorphisms and cranial shape variables of modern human populations from Africa and Asia. We show that both lines of evidence support a multiple-dispersals model in which Australo-Melanesian populations are relatively isolated descendants of an early dispersal, whereas other Asian populations are descended from, or highly admixed with, members of a subsequent migration event.

The abstract doesn’t mention it, but the first pulse would have hung out on or around the Arabian peninsula for many thousands of years, before moving east to India, and then later some of them moving all the way to Australia.

The article at ScienceDaily:

First Eurasians left Africa up to 130,000 years ago

includes this graphic:

During the time of the second exodus out of Africa there was probably some back-migration into East Africa, taking with it some Neanderthal DNA from then recent inter-breeding in SW Asia.

Mongrels, all of us.

Combine this with the recent discovery that the paleness of Europeans is a very recent phenomenon (likely driven by sexual selection) in modern human evolution, with the discovery of the circa 25k-20k common ancestors in central Asia of both east Asians, Native Americans, which also influenced European gene pool … and we see just how wrong “racial” divisions of old are, as far as dividing up people today.